


How Were We To Know?

by Henndra



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Auror Partners, Fake/Pretend Relationship, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-01
Updated: 2016-08-01
Packaged: 2018-07-28 10:27:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,648
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7636615
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Henndra/pseuds/Henndra
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Draco can tell by looking at him what kind of day his Auror Partner, Harry Potter, has had. In fact he'd fo as far to say that he knew just about everything about him if he looked hard enough for it.</p><p>Some things it seems, are so obvious, you don't notice them at all.</p>
            </blockquote>





	How Were We To Know?

When Potter comes in, I can tell where he’s been and what he’s done. 

We spend most of our days together but I know most of everything in between. Today he’s on time. Which doesn’t usually mean much except that when he comes in he puts his feet up on his desk, which means he’s been up for hours. Nightmares if you go by the way he keeps tugging at his hair. Which means tea, strong, extra sugar for when he’s tired. 

“Potter,” I give a nod in salute and take a quick exit just to watch him rub at his eye sockets. Biscuits too then.

When I return I make an effort to spill his tea as I put it on his desk. The last time I brought a singular cup back for him, he gave me the strangest look I’ve ever witnessed and I have never repeated this action with the same level of care. I put the plate of biscuits on my desk but there are too many as always and he will steal them when he thinks I am not looking or have left the room.

“Kingsley will be asking for that report this morning,” he says as he gingerly approaches his cup.

“I’ve got my half, you done yours?” I know he has, he’s not stupid, he’s not as daft as I often thought him to appear in his youth.

“Ugh, yeah I’ll go drop them with him in a minute.” He buses with his table, drinking his tea with one hand, exhaling as he tastes it.

“I’ll go, I need to talk to him about my annual leave anyway.” I say, just to give him time to sneak the biscuits.

“France again? How is your Mum?”

“She’s fine Potter.” I reply, taking his side of the caseload with me as I exit.

I take them straight to Kingsley, it was a high priority case after all, otherwise it’d been sucked up to fifth like the rest of it all. He looks over it briefly, nodding as usual. 

“Exemplary work Malfoy, thanks for this.”

“Sir,” I nod, my body bowing a little as I do. “About annual leave..”  
“Don’t worry Malfoy, already scheduled in ready for your mother’s birthday.”

“Thanks again Sir.” I smile and leave without further fuss.

I can’t have been long but when I return Potter is busy with both the biscuits and Mrs Weasley(.nee Granger) and they seem to be in a heated disagreement.

“Barrister,” I say in greeting, she nods but briefly at me before turning back to her tirade.

“Harry, just try it for me. You can’t say no just to be stubborn for the sake of being stubborn. I thought you liked Andrew!” She attempts a softer, beseeching tone at the word ‘Andrew’ and already I want to sock the fucker in the mouth.

“It’s not that Hermione really! It’s-”

Wait! Andrew? A bloke Andrew?!

“I’m seeing someone!” Harry cries, and for the split second in which I know Potter dates men I have already lost him.

“Oh! Really?” Hermione Weasley-woman doesn’t believe him. “You’ve been seeing someone, whilst still seeing Ron and I every other day, whilst also working impossible hours here every day? I don’t believe you. You are calling Andrew, that’s final!”

“I-” he looks to me and with a flash of his eyes I know automatically that he’s been lying and what he’s about to do next. “We- that is- had to keep it a secret.”

“Harry.” She whines, holstering her hands on her hips, why her wand is drawn in her right is beyond me.

“Isn’t that right Draco?” He leans around her, which is a bit ridiculous as she’s seven months pregnant.

“Right.” 

Her brows cross. “Malfoy? But-” She turns to me fully. “I didn’t even know you liked men!”

“Oh yes,” I sneer on autopilot. “Auror Malfoy. Ex-Death Eater, Gemini, Cock sucking enthusiast!” I tease with an outstretched hand and I hear Harry choke his laughter down. It’s all I can do to keep my face straight.

“Fine, I get your point.” She bites back and turns back to Potter in a flurry of hair. “You Mister! Aren’t off the hook. We’ll talk about this later tonight!”

“Actually I can’t tonight!” Potter flounders, reaching back for his quills for some reason.

“Potter and I have a prior engagement this evening.”

Exasperated, she throws her arms up to the ceiling before, very dramatically, she leaves.

It’s a while before Potter regains control of his mouth. “Sorry bout that. We think it’s hormonal. Feels she has to settle everyone else around her before the baby’s born.” He bites the corner of his bottom lip, which looks ridiculous but in my Potter-addled state it endearing. “Thank you, for rolling with it.”

I hate myself for being affected, but I clear my throat and all emotion therein before saying “What are Auror Partners for?” I pick up my tea and drain the whole thing, temprature be damned and return to my older case files.

 

We’re called to the field before lunch and make three arrests before heading out for lunch, it takes me half way into my sandwich before I realize we’re always comfortably silent like this and rarely lunch separately, a fact that only now sizzles my skin and all because Granger-Weasley thinks we’re boyfriends.

I go to speak and cut Potter off as he does the same but with a mouthful of burger. “Sorry you go.” He mumbles, trying to clear his mouth.

“No you.” I concede.

He coughs about three times more than necessary to start this conversation but it’s apparent why when he goes; “I have a proposition for you.”

I laugh at him I can’t help it and he drinks it in with a strange look before continuing with whatever it is he has to say, all I can think of is ridiculous situations where he’s paying me for sex or something similar in kind and I can’t take his candour seriously.

He glares at me, he pouts when he glares, it’s confusing.

“Sorry, go on.”

“I was just going to ask, you that is. Well, at least until Hermione’s off my back about this Andrew guy. If you would be comfortable with continuing to let her believe the lie I told her this morning.” 

“What’s so bad about this Andrew guy?”

That’s clearly not what he wants to hear, “He’s just not- look. He works with Hermione. He’s nice, he smiles the nice smiles, he’s polite, he’s boring, whatever. I just don’t want to okay?” He edges a fraction closer. “Malfoy please.”

“You called me Draco before.” I say dumbly because he’s clutched at my sleeve with such desperation he could literally ask me of anything and I’d give it.

“What?”

“Would that be all that changed around the office? Calling me Draco instead of Malfoy?” I stare at my plate because it seems like the safe thing to do. 

He let’s go of my sleeve. “Um, right. Possibly. I think she might check on us, maybe get us to double date or go to a Ministry do or something, she’s always trying to get me to take dates to those things.”  
“I see.” I sip my water, heart racing, imagination galloping off into the sunset without me or a rational sense of reality.

“See’s going to ask me about this, which is why I lied about tonight.”

“Right-” I accidentally cut him off, “Set up a timeline and such.”

“Yeah.”

“Okay then Potter, fire away.”

“Maybe later, time’s up.”

“Fuck! Robard’s is going to tear my ass into pieces if I don’t these reports in by two!” I throw my napkin down as Potter trips onto the table leg, sputtering apologies to whoever turns to watch him trip over himself.

 

“What if we got into it at work or something?” He cuts the silence like a knife.

“Excuse me?” I re dip my quill, thinking too hard about one case of drunken disturbance than necessary.

“What if I tell Hermione, we got into it at work and one thing led to another.”  
I snort, “What a shag at the office turns into a whirlwind romance?”

“No, I mean, what if like, we started off shagging or something, and kept it quiet and then it got serious or whatever with feelings and such.”

I drop my quill and look up at him to watch him looking at me, his eyes dark and awaiting my response, “How long do we tell her? A few months? Six? We’re at work together all the time it wouldn’t be that hard to fabricate. We could tell her we kept it on site? She can’t prove otherwise.”

He nods slowly, either deep in thought or merciful Merlin imagining it like I am. 

“Right um, six months.” He let’s his boots drop from his desk and licks his lips, now knowing he likes men holds so much more implication now as he licks them like that and readjusts his jeans. “NO! Seven! The Brooks case! You and I were at each other's throats with that one! We can tell her we were so mad we just went for it, and it all turned over after that.”

The groan I emit is long and tortured, “The Brooks case! Don’t remind me about the fucking Brooks case!” I would have rather fucked him over the Brooks case, long and arduous as it was. “Fine. Seven months, we fucked about for two or three, fought again, probably, and made it a thing. Tell her we keep it a secret for work. Nobody has to know outside the circle. That ‘right?”

“Perfect.”

I let the silence go on too long before returning to my work, only speaking again after I know he has returned to his, my voice sounds almost broken as I ask; “And how long will it take before this whole Andrew thing blows over?”

 

We end up in a full scale raid that night that doesn’t miss Hermione’s attentions, she arrives in our offices before both of have figured out our own heads from our asses, “Rough night last night?”

Potter groan is akin to one of fury at this point.

“Must have stunted last night's plans then eh Malfoy?” She leans on his desk and ignores him, awaiting me to contradict her.

I rub my hands over my face, still bloody tired, half exhausted and still a little scraped up. “Yes well, what’s date night compared to a whole underground den of child traffickers Barrister? I’m sure I’ll make it up to Harry somehow.”

I can’t read her face, nor Harry’s when I look back up at them and I’m too tired to try to, so I leave for the break room to make tea, throwing half the canister worth of sugar between the two of us. It doesn’t occur to me to make Barrister Weasley a cup until I return to the room to find her gone.

“Left so soon?” I drawl, spilling his tea only not so much on purpose this time.

“She believes us I think, recommended we ‘make up for last night’ by going to the Gala on Friday.” He rests on folded arms, nodding thank you as the tea lands by his side. “What no biscuits?”

He smiles, the ass. I don’t rise to the bait but groan. “Fuck the biscuits, I plan to drown myself in this tea and be buried here.”

He laughs, the sound coming through deep from the back of his throat and it warms my body over. It’s the simplest thing but it soothes me, it isn’t till Kingsley asks for us in his office sometime after ten that either of us move an inch.

 

“You realize if we go to this thing, not just ‘Mione but everyone will think we’re dating right?” Harry sucks at tying ties, so I take over, not caring on how it looks.

“So?”

“So?! Well, wouldn’t that bother you or something?” His breath is warm across my cheek.

“I am a full grown man, and though I am a reformed nitwit, I am more importantly reformed. Who gives a damn what people think Potter, I thought that was your motto.” I don’t look at him but feel him look at me, he readjusts my tie even though it doesn’t need it and I let him because even though it doesn’t the intimacy of the situation does. “It’s not like you're hindering my prospects Potter. I don’t see lines of men outside chancing for a bit of Malfoy ass.”

He snickers, and let’s his hands fall to the side.

“Alright, I think we need a bit of ground rules, or guidelines for tonight.” 

“Fine, spoil all my fun, no groping, no griping and no fellatic phallic objects at you from across the room.” I laugh even as he goes red.

He huffs a smile, “I just meant. If we need back up in a social situation, ways to segway if we came across a grey area in our lie. Maybe a guide to what level of physical closeness either deemed appropriate for a Ministry function but… fuck really Draco? Fellating phallic objects. Oh my god!”

I promise the giggle I then let slip is the most manliest of kinds, to dazed in the closeness neither of us has stepped out of, whispering our secrets, I’m on cloud nine and I don’t care, I giggle.

“Fine fine Potter. Spoil sport. Um, how about we set a time limit on this thing, stay together the whole night, interrupt like rude asses whenever we notice the other dig themselves into a hole they can’t get out of?”

He nods and laughs and my gaze is drawn to his lips, “Kissing.” I add, because I’m an idiot. “I mean, it’s a Ministry ‘do’, so arm in arm seems pretty tame, I don’t really expect either of us to dance but I think the most you’d have to push it to would be a peck on the cheek, lip maybe?”

I’m too close, and I’m too far into it, I’m thinking too much about his mouth and not enough about keeping myself out of physical harm. I kiss him, nothing much, just the aforementioned peck on the lips, just so that I know the feel of his lips before I pull away.

“That wasn’t too bad was it?” I wobble.

 

We step through the floo together, hand in hand and he clutches at mine when he sees his friends like he’s nervous, before I can catch myself by thumb is stroking his knuckles in attempt to soothe him. “Just remember what we agreed on, and remember that I’ll be right here with you.”

“I fucking hate crowds,” he deflects no matter how true and so I squeeze his hand back.

He pushes through the crowd desperate to reach his friends, the Weasel doesn’t even blink at our entwined hands so at least his wife’s gotten him up to speed. 

“I fucking hate these things,” the Weasel says in greeting and Potter’s hand is momentarily dislodged as he reaches around to clap a hand across his friends back. He pulls Hermione into a gentle squeeze, his hips making way for the baby. 

She murmurs into his ear to which he replies, “I told you we would.”

“Doubting us again is she?” I try to sound more confident than I feel, smiling politely with the appropriate amount of thinly veiled toxicity.

“Not at all Malfoy, I just know neither of you liked these things, I figured you’d both make your excuses and play hooky or something.”

I pull my arm around his waist tighter, so he’s flush to me, barely breathing enough to comprehend the look he gives me. “Well as enticing as that sounds, we promised. Didn’t we?”

He rubs at my jacket collar and I suddenly don’t want to be here at all. I want to be home where I don’t have to endure this farce at all, or I want to exist in another reality where this is real and I can take Potter home, where I know if that look means what I think it means and where it’s real and he wants me. My skin breaks out into goosebumps as we’re ushered through to the main chamber and the moment is taken from us as were jostled through the door. 

“Drink?” Potter asks and is away before he takes my order. 

I stand by the Weasel before I realize his better half is missing, neither of us speak but fall back into comfortable people watching. Potter is nowhere to be found before it starts to feel too uncomfortable so I bite the bullet, “You don’t seem that surprised by us.”

He looks at me like I’ve grown an extra head and seems too tall as he considers me for a second.

“Po-Harry and I.” I restate, as if it isn’t clear enough.

“Oh yeah nah!” The Weasel, really, is a master of words. “After all those years of asking you out, I figured it just made sense he finally wore you down.”

What.

Fuck I’ve said it out aloud haven’t I? “Oh you know all those times, just after I quit the DMLE? When you two first got paired up? I just figured it was this again, that’s all. Made more sense than ‘Mione made it out not to be, you know?”

“Right,” I feign a chuckle. “Nearly forgot about all that.”

Potter returns with our drinks and I haven’t a clue what Ronald is talking about.

 

I down my drink quicker than usual but not too quick for anyone to notice, though Potter squints his eyes at me like he might have. 

“I don’t suppose you dance Malfoy?” 

“With you Barrister? Yes that would be lovely. With him?” I point to Harry, “Merlin no. He’s atrocious.” We laugh and he swats my arm, it almost feels real and the firewhiskey burns down my throat.

“Oi! What about me?” Weasley cries, placing a possessive hand around the small of his wife’s back.

I look at him as if studiously, going for humour when I sigh and say, “Well, you seem tall for me, but I’m sure one turn about the floor couldn’t be too hazardous.”

We laugh again and my chest aches and my mind buzzes.

We’re two drinks in by the time we circulate the room, he clings to my side even as Hermione drags us around to meet all the ‘important’ people. All the ‘important’ people, I must add, are not the types my late father would have deemed important, but rather those more important to her causes the affiliations she works with. I’m here with Harry, she could drag me anywhere.

Three drinks in and I try not let the lie slip from my lips, I’m tipsy enough to know to watch myself but in control enough to prevent myself from drinking further.

When ‘Andrew’ introduces himself to us, I defy time and space and down the fourth completely.

“You’re drinking too much Draco,” Harry whispers in my ear, the feeling too illicit for me. “Are you really that uncomfortable here or are you determined to make it seem like I’m dating a drunk?”

“Fuck!” Kingsley spots us from across the room, his eyes flicker down to our hands and then back up to our faces, “Kingsley wants to see us.”

“Oh shite.” Harry sighs, ignoring my sudden apparent drinking habit.

We make our way to the nearest alcove and for the first time all night we let go of each other's hands like we’re suddenly touching fire. I’d be mad but I’m too confused to care all that much.

“Ah, boys I found you! Last week, that potion making scam, you got the toxicology reports on that yeah?”

“Um, yes Sir?” I am the first to respond.

“Good. Could you send a copy down to filing first thing Monday, they lost the original. Thought I’d ask now before I forget it. Don’t want another one lost through the grates on shoddy filing!” With a smile and a pat on our backs he is gone.

“What just happened?” Harry is frozen.

“I think he doesn’t care?” I am equally as such. 

“Mustn't. I mean, we were very clearly seen. He couldn’t have not seen us!” 

“Right?” I turn to him and again we are too close to be hidden in an alcove. I want to kiss his stupid pretty mouth forever and for once in the four fucking years we’ve been partnered I wish I could hate him with the same aimless misplaces rage I once did in highschool. “Where’s your Barrister, I want to say goodbye before I leave.” I say and he looks down at my mouth, I know he does. I walk away before I make a mistake.

 

We walk into my flat, I floo there and he follows, neither of us think against it as we march silently from the auditorium. 

“Draco look-”

“What does the Weasel mean when he said all those times you asked me out?” I turn on him, because upon my exit I may have stolen a flute of a sixth drink that isn’t sitting with me too well.

Potter changes, his softness is gone and the snort he gives sounds more like he wants to punch me in the face more than anything, “You have got to be fucking kidding me.”

“Clearly I am not!” I huff, throwing myself onto my bed as the room is starting to spin and it's easier to have a conversation when the world isn’t trying to make you fall over.

I wait a second, and then peek out behind my hands which had been covering my face to see him looking at me, “Wait. You’re fucking serious.” 

“Obviously.” I huff again, he stands by the end of the bed, twitching about with his feet as if he can’t figure out how to pose properly before he yells at me some more. “I think I’d remember if you asked me out Potter, I am not that dense!”

“All those times I asked you out to the pub after work, or to dinner. Or… fuck!? I don’t know there were loads of times. Fuck Draco! Seriously!”

“You were asking me out?” I squeak, I blame it on the alcohol.

“What did you think I was doing?” He throws his hands at me, like that’s supposed to make this nonsense suddenly make more sense.

“Trying to cozy up to your new Auror Partner?” I squeak again, it’s okay I’ve decided to kill myself in the morning.

“No, no! Then you would have gone, or at least attempted something like going!” He’s mad I think, I don’t know I’m tired suddenly.

“Potter. Potter. I hadn’t seen you since the trials, I didn’t think we were going to last, I thought at best I’d toe the line until you politely asked for a transfer of some kind. I honestly didn’t think we’d last this long to notice.”

He makes the bed dip as he leans down onto it, making his way over to me on all fours. “You notice how I take my tea.”

“I notice everything Potter.” My stomach turns at the admission, I groan because now tears are threatening my eyes and I have the distinct fear I’m about to confess everything.

“You can’t have noticed how much, how much I care about you.” He whispers, his gaze burning my cheek, I feel like he stopped himself from saying love there and I want to wring my insides out because here I go:

“Must be too busy trying to hide how much I care for you.” I turn to face him now, not daring to speak louder than a whisper but the light that brightens his face speaks volumes for either of us. I lean in to kiss him now because I know he’ll lean the rest of the way, he takes my mouth against his with unreserved passion and it overwhelms me. I curl into him touching his arm with a cautious hand as I let him claim me, his hot mouth pressing everywhere before I slip my tongue against his bottom lip. He catches it and sighs so happily even as it breaks the kiss to smile, like he’s wanted nothing more to kiss me.

“I don’t- I can’t- I’m sorry- That was-”

“As ineloquent as ever Potter!” I have the pleasure to tease him, leaning in once again to bite at his bottom lip, nibbling it a little until his top lip concedes to me and we fall into a kiss once more. I kiss him until my eagerness and enthusiasm threatens to embarrass me and I fall back against the mattress. “Well, at least your friends are already used to the idea.”

He chuckles, all teeth, the broadest smile I’ve ever seen let alone bestowed upon him.

“Kingsley too!”

“Him too!” I lean back in, having trouble to stay away, his body is warm under my questing hands, I find skin underneath the edge of his shirt, his breath hitches, “You’re right though Andrew is dead boring.”

I shouldn’t have brought it up but I shouldn’t be doing this, not now, not like this.

“Oh my god you were jealous!” 

“What? No!”

“You totally were, I can’t believe it.” His arms are around me and they’re pulling me in. “We’re both blind though, so how was I to know?”

He kisses me, he kisses me hard enough to make me want everything I’ve ever dared wanting, I’m pulling at his dinner jacket and unbuttoning his shirt before I can stop myself, taking refuse in the crook of his neck, we’re both panting.

“Not like this. I’m halfway to drunk, not like this. I’ve wanted you for way too long Harry to start us off like this,” I screw my eyes shut and hold my breath because I’ve always expected to lose this and in some part of my brain it stands to reason that if he can’t have me now he won’t ever want me again.

“Come here,” He whispers as he finishes taking off my jacket. 

We lay there, on my bed for what feels like hours, probably just minutes, clutching each other like comfortable old lovers do. He rubs circles on the curve of my arm and I sneak my hand under his shirt vest to play with the hair that pools around his belly button. 

“How long?” He croaks.

“I don’t know.” I sigh, “Long before you asked me out but I chose not to examine anything to earlier than that, the war. I was- we weren’t.”

“I know.” He whispers again. 

“I just-” I begin to explain myself, I never got to the big apology after we were paired up, we just had to make it work. I feel the anxiety of it all threaten to overcome me again but he interrupts me again.

“I couldn’t let you die in the fire. You held me so tight, I couldn’t sleep some nights thinking about it. It wasn’t until after the trails. But um, before Ron quit.” He croaks his words out again overcome, I lean up to kiss his mouth, to let him know I know, that it’s all okay now.

I don’t remember falling asleep exactly but I remember his warmth alongside me throughout the night. I remember pushing my shoes off and hearing them land upon his already upon the floor, when I wake clearly in the morning, the sun shines through the window that I had neglected to close the day before, he clutches at my undershirt and his glasses are nowhere to be seen.  As we move across each others bodies languidly all I can feel is a sense of change, erupting.


End file.
